Destroyed My Life Quotes & Sayings

I'm looking at the ruins of my own existence and knowing, with a sickening certainty, that my old home and my old life have been truly destroyed. — K.C. Finn

I wanted some assurances that my life would never again be torn apart like that, that I would never again suffer the pain of watching my loved one destroyed by his own hand. And with that one telephone message I realized, in a brutal, final way that so long as I was with Flynn I would never be protected from the horror of suicide. That he would always be capable of stopping his medication, always be capable of lying to cover his illness, always be capable of swallowing forty pills and lying down beside his girlfriend to die. — Tabitha Suzuma

I fall in love with something and wear it every day until it's destroyed. My most treasured items have a very short shelf life because I love them too much. — Mackenzie Davis

This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do: That is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much ... I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established. — Neville Chamberlain

Fight. Life had effectively pulled the rug, the flooring, and the fucking planet from under my feet.
Winters, Pepper (2014-03-06). Destroyed (p. 3). Pepper Winters. Kindle Edition. — Pepper Winters

Then I know Prim is right, that Snow cannot afford to waste Peeta's life, especially now, while the Mockingjay causes so much havoc. He's killed Cinna already. Destroyed my home. My family, Gale, and even Haymitch are out of his reach. Peeta's all he has left.
"So, what do you think they'll do to him?" I ask.
Prim sound about a thousand years old when she speaks."Whatever it takes to break you. — Suzanne Collins

You happened to me," she told him, her voice more fatigued than embittered. "You came out of a grubby sixth-rate farm on a tenth-rate planet, and destroyed my life." - Mara Jade — Timothy Zahn

My days of laziness have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous endeavor; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine that rages in my soul. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

You told me a love story. I honestly believe your parents wanted the best for you, but their love almost destroyed your life. If Our Lady, as she appeared in my grandmother's painting, was treading on a snake, that indicates that love has two faces. — Paulo Coelho

Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years of pediatric surgery, I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life. If toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother's health, the doctor will induce labor or perform a Caesarean section. His intention is to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby's life is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger. — C. Everett Koop

And what of my extended family-birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch? (pg. 98) — Yann Martel

Mapleshade: "Your punishment is complete now, Crookedstar. You have lost everything."
Crookedstar: "No, Mapleshade. You're wrong. I still have a clan that I love and am proud to lead. And now ... now everything precious to me is here, in StarClan. My family is waiting here for me, when my ninth life has passed. It's you who have lost. You have no power over me anymore."
Mapleshade: "I have destroyed you!"
Crookedstar: "No, Mapleshade. I still have the cats that I loved. You have nothing and no one. — Erin Hunter

You understand nothing, I told him with a weary shake of the head, but I would not try to make him understand. That there was no justification for it: the murder of another, no matter how vile. We had all been wrong and, blackest of ironies, I had known this to hold that precious and wondrous thing, life, in my hands. To hold it in my hands before I destroyed it. — Krisi Keley

Yes, yes," he shut off her attempted objection. "You would have destroyed my writing and my career. Realism is imperative to my nature, and the bourgeois spirit hates realism. The bourgeoisie is cowardly. It is afraid of life. And all your effort was to make me afraid of life. You would have formalized me. You would have compressed me into a two-by-four pigeonhole of life, where all life's values are unreal and false and vulgar." He felt her stir protestingly. "Vulgarity
a heart of vulgarity, I'll admit
is the basis of bourgeois refinement and culture. As I say, you wanted to formalize me to make me over into one of your own class, with your class ideas, class values and class prejudices. — Jack London

I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. — Constantine P. Cavafy

But, astonishingly, I'm not broken. I'm not destroyed. Terrified witless, shaking, retching with fear, yes. But no longer insecure. Because during my search for how you died, I somehow found myself to be a different person ... Living my life. And it wouldn't be my grief for you that toppled the mountain, but love. — Rosamund Lupton

And I give them eternal life, and they shall never lose it or perish throughout the ages. [To all eternity they shall never by any means be destroyed.] And no one is able to snatch them out of My hand. — Max Lucado

I made a mask out of my face because I didn't realize I was quite beautiful. God blessed me so. I practically destroyed it. I had to wear heavy black eyelashes like bat wings, and dark lines under my eyes, and cut all my hair off, my long dark hair. Cut it off and stripped it silver and blonde. All those little maneuvers I did out of things that were happening in my life that upset me. — Edie Sedgwick

You act as if I were your enemy.
"You are my enemy. You seek to end the things I love."
And is an ending always bad? it asked. Must not all things, even worlds, someday end?
"There is no need to hasten that end," Vin said. "No reason to force it."
All things are subject to their own nature, Vin, Ruin said, seeming to flow around her. She could feel its touch on her - wet and delicate, like mist. You cannot blame me for what I am. Without me, nothing would end. Nothing could end. And therefore, nothing could grow. I am life. Would you fight life itself?
Vin fell silent.
Do not mourn because the day of this world's end has arrived, Ruin said. That end was ordained the very day of the world's conception. There is a beauty in death - the beauty of finality, the beauty of completion.
For nothing is truly complete until the day it is finally destroyed. — Brandon Sanderson

Many years later after the sell-outs, betrayals, and hatred which would tear us apart, when our brotherhood had been destroyed, I'd always look back and remember that night. That fucking wild night at the KeyClub, when the smoke stung my eyes but my world was full of nothing but blind hope. When life was not a mockery, but a very real fire which flamed through my veins like the most incredible drug... the night when Kelly-Lee Obann, drunk, high and barely 20 the time, looked out through his hair with a terrible nakedness and said to me;
"We're not gonna make it out of this alive. You know that, right? — H. Alazhar

For, I think, when I woke up today, with a dream of yesterday still in my eyes,I felt tired in life. And thinking of the little blond girl of Mays & Junes long gone by,I felt strange looking on a field of wheat, and I thought, in a moment I was God and so was she, and this field was us too. So long gone, she goes. But I am still her, whether she comes and goes like all of life, or she stays awhile.
Once, a man of physics told me, matter cannot be created or destroyed. And on
another occasion he said everything came from one point, in the beginning.
So we are all flowers and rivers and trees. That was all of us together. Every one of the past, present, and future. — Derek Keck

OEDIPUS:
Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-
whether he is one man and all unknown,
or one of many- may he wear out his life
in misery to miserable doom!
If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth
I pray that I myself may feel my curse.
On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this
for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken. — Sophocles

I have lived among negroes, all my life, and I am for this Government with slavery under the Constitution as it is. I am for the Government of my fathers with negroes. I am for it without negroes. Before I would see this Government destroyed I would send every negro back to Africa, disintegrated and blotted out of space — Andrew Johnson

I like checking days off a calendar - 151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn't ruined. 153 and I haven't destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don't have to worry about life anymore. — Gillian Flynn

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. — A.W. Tozer

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is-like a corpse-buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."
New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land-do not hope-
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.2 — Constantine P. Cavafy

If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed. — Franz Wright

Despite all the other factors that had contributed to my fate, in the end it was my decision that destroyed my life. And all the hurt I was enduring now was my doing. The blame rested solely with me. — Brodi Ashton

We come from seed," he told his son, smiling. "We grow up, blossom, and produce fruit. Then the fruit dries and goes into the ground to make the next crop. The old plant doesn't die so much as it gives itself to the soil to nurture the new plant. Since energy is neither created nor destroyed, only altered, dying is the other face on the coin of life. Nothing to be afraid of, really. After all, my boy, we all pass from this plane into another. It's inevitable, like the rainbow after the storm. — Diana Palmer

My mother's life had been destroyed by the Garland legend. — Lorna Luft

I never had a boss in my whole life. I've totally destroyed anybody's ability to tell me what to do. — David H. Murdock

The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden, completely out of all bounds. Going there risked expulsion, destroyed the studying I was going to do for an important test the next morning, blasted the reasonable amount of order I wanted to maintain in my life, and it also involved the kind of long, labored bicycle ride I hated. "All right," I said. We got our bikes and slipped away from Devon along a back road. Having invited me Finny now felt he had to keep me entertained. He told long, wild stories about his childhood; as I pumped panting up steep hills he glided along beside me, joking steadily. He analyzed my character, and he insisted on knowing what I disliked most about him ("You're too conventional," I said). — John Knowles

Now, I will be the first to admit that human life was not worth much to my generation in the Iron Age, but Flidais and her kind are forever rooted in Bronze Age morality, which goes something like this: If it pleases me, then it is good and I want more; If it displeases me, then it must be destroyed as soon as possible, but preferably in a way that enhances my reputation so that I can achieve immortality in the songs of bards. — Kevin Hearne

I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow ... — Henry Miller

Here, listen to this; a poem by a Greek who lived in Alexandria, one Cavafy: "You said, 'I shall go to another land to another sea Another city will be found better than this. My every effort is a written indictment And my heart - like the dead - is buried. How long will my mind be in this decay,' "and so on like that, it's the same old song we know so well - if only I were somewhere else, I would be happy. Until the poet replies to his poor friend, "New lands you will not find, you won't find other seas. The city will follow you. The streets you roam will be the same. There is no boat for you, there is no street. In the same way your life you destroyed here In this petty corner, you have spoiled it in the entire universe. — Kim Stanley Robinson

In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens if I can't forgive myself for making that choice? And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself? What am I supposed to do? Conclusion: It'd be best if I'm destroyed. The best thing is for me just to vanish. — Natsuo Kirino

A Short Testament

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches. — Anne Porter

There's days when I'd love everybody to relize that things have gone too far, and we need to be born again ... but there are other days when I think the world deserves to be destroyed. Why should I help anybody? Everybody's stepped on me my whole life. — Marilyn Manson

Please," Kendra said. "Think of all the lives that will be destroyed."
"I have," Mark said. "Believe me, darling, I grasp all aspects of this, I really do. But how much has the public I'm protecting worried about me? My sanity, my happiness, my right to find peace?"
"They made no promises," Bracken said. "They are not preventing the end of the world. Those who know about your sacrifice appreciate you immeasurably. Your life may not be fair, but it is absolutely necessary. — Brandon Mull

The Vietnam War totally turned my life around. Some people's lives were eliminated or destroyed by the experience. I was one of the fortunate few who came out better off. — Craig Venter

It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the second-hander's credo now swallowing the world. — Ayn Rand

And yet there are other days, when I'm downtrodden or morose, when I find myself at my desk late at night, unable to sleep, flipping through (of all things) Oscar's dog-eared copy of Watchmen. One of the few things that he took with him on the Final Voyage that we recovered. The original trade. I flip through the book, one of his top three, without question, to the last horrifying chapter: "A Stronger Loving World." To the only panel he's circled. Oscar - who never defaced a book in his life - circled one panel three times in the same emphatic pen he used to write his last letters home. The panel where Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan are having their last convo. After the mutant brain has destroyed New York City; after Dr. Manhattan has murdered Rorschach; after Veidt's plan has succeded in "saving the world." Veidt says: "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end." And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: "In — Junot Diaz

Fine. The next time that my life is destroyed, I'll try to express my distress in a quieter fashion, far away from your tender sensibilities. — Colleen Houck Ren

It is, I know, for I have experienced it perhaps twice in my life, an awful privilege to be too much loved and perhaps the kindest thing I ever did in my life was never to let Matthew know to what degree he had destroyed my peace and my happiness. — Stephen Fry

From the classically executed lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like those states which I'm nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. — Anne Rice

Good evening, London. I would introduce myself, but truth to tell, I do not have a name. You can call me "V". Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse. In anarchy, there is another way. With anarchy, from rubble comes new life, hope reinstated. They say anarchy's dead, but see ... reports of my death were ... exaggerated. Tomorrow, Downing Street will be destroyed, the Head reduced to ruins, an end to what has gone before. Tonight, you must choose what comes next. Lives of our own, or a return to chains. Choose carefully. And so, adieu. — Alan Moore

The reality, certainly in my life, is that we all have love stories that go terribly wrong; we all have horribly broken hearts. And somehow we endure. We're not destroyed by it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made 'realizations' the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by 'maistry'. — C.S. Lewis

I remembered those frantic seconds when I'd thought all I loved and knew, all that was Sydney Sage, would be lost from this world. My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. We'd destroyed it, but it was terrifying how touch and go it all had been. At any moment, the Strigoi could have gained the advantage and killed one or all of us. Life and death were inextricably bound together, and we wavered between them. But we'd triumphed over death tonight. We were alive, and the world was beautiful. Life was beautiful, and I refused to waste mine. — Richelle Mead

He looked at her in bittersweet despair. "Sometimes, Kate, when I'm inside you and your arms are around me, I'm human again. There's a beginning and an end to my life again. And all because of your love. It's been a gift to me, one I've never deserved. But I cherished it."
And maybe he'd destroyed it with the ungodly truth. He didn't know. He drew
a shaky breath, battered by a fresh wave of regret, and his voice trembled. "I thought I had broken your heart a while ago. I didn't know how to make you hear me, and I knew that by telling you the truth, I'd lose you. But here you sit. You haven't flipped out, not visibly anyway, nor accused me of being a liar. And you haven't run in terror, now that you're truly free to go. I don't know what to think. Tell me, Kate ... have I lost you? — Shelby Reed

How shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man
my greatest enemy
for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage, and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation
crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery
as far as man can do it
it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband
I HATE him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him
I hate him! — Anne Bronte

I remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was from everywhere, I didn't have no buddies that I grew up with ... Every time I had to go to a new apartment, I had to reinvent myself, myself. People think just because you born in the ghetto you gonna fit in. A little twist in your life and you don't fit in no matter what. If they push you out of the hood and the White people's world, that's criminal ... Hell, I felt like my could be destroyed at any moment. — Tupac Shakur

I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost. — Jeanette Winterson

My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me. — Steve Maraboli

When I was a boy, playing at the beach, I remember a game I loved, which was an omen of my future life. I would dig a channel with high sides in the sand for the sea to fill. But when the water flooded the path I created for it with such violence that it destroyed everything in its way: my castles made of pebbles, my dikes of sand. It swept away everything, destroying it all, then disappeared, leaving me with a heavy heart, yet not daring to ask for pity, since the sea had only responded to my call. It's the same with love. You call out for it, you plan its course. The wave crashes into your heart, but it's so different from how you imagined it, so bitter and icy. — Irene Nemirovsky

I was created, then the Society ordered the destruction of all mods. The day after I was born, the date of my death was set! So I sweated in that pill, just waiting to die. Day after day, my brothers and sisters were killed. Then I got lucky and got shipped out with a load of goods by mistake. Still, I always expected to be discovered and destroyed. I had a lot of time to think about things. I decided no one has the right to take a life. I exist! I should have the right to live and die freely!! Like humans, or even bugs. Even a mod should have that right. So I refuse to take a life. I won't kill ... not anything! — Tite Kubo

I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Of all the temptations that ever I met with in my life, to question the being of God, and truth of His gospel is the worst, and the worst to be borne; when this temptation comes, it takes away my girdle from me, and removeth the foundation from under me: Oh! I have often thought of that word, Have your loins girt about with truth; and of that, When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? — John Bunyan

My travels through physics really are the same urges that make me travel through ecology. They are not really different, except that there is an added dimension of seeing ecological destruction and seeing the very life-support system that makes us survive on this planet being destroyed. That makes me do more than just inquire; it compels me to act and to intervene. — Vandana Shiva

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known. — Dennis Hopper

Will stared down at his hands. "My whole life wrecked, destroyed ... "
"You're seventeen," Magnus said. "You can't have wrecked a life you've barely lived. — Cassandra Clare

I never realized how empty my life had really become until I had him in it. He did that to me. He said I wrecked him, but he completely destroyed me. Everything was fine when I was alone. When I didn't have to feel or think or care about someone else. Sure I was sad and broken, but I was okay. Now, I'm anything but. — A. Zavarelli

All my life, I have been working with children whose lives were destroyed because their mothers hated them.
1981 re: cause of autism — Bruno Bettelheim

You were the biggest mistake of my life, Kellan. You were right - we're not friends, never were. I wish you would just go away.
I felt like she'd just reached into my chest and squeezed my heart until it burst open in her hands. Her words hurt me more than anything I'd ever heard before, and I'd heard some pretty shitty things in my lifetime. This was worse than anything my father had ever said or done to me. It was worse than hearing her have sex with Denny five seconds after me. This ... destroyed me. — S.C. Stephens

I destroyed that doll, hoping the sacrifice would somehow reverse time and bring my father back. I was a mad scientist and an angry child. — Walter Mosley

What I failed to see was that, by ending my life, I would cause interminable pain to my family and friends. I could not understand the heartbreak it would cause those around me. Nor did I consider that my brother, Joseph, might live the rest of his life in continual rage, or that my sister, Libby, might shut herself off from the world and fall into perpetual depression, silence, and sadness mistakenly blaming themselves for my death as many family members do when they lose someone they love to suicide. I certainly held no understanding of the enormous pain my mother and father would suffer because they lost their oldest son in such a terrifying and devastating way. They would not have a chance to watch me mature, marry, and perhaps have children. Instead, all of their hopes, aspirations, and dreams for me would be destroyed with my decision to end my life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. — Kevin Hines

But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that's going to blow up everything?

Consider one more possibility: that you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed. — Ellen Ullman

Maybe it's my own fault. Maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn't. Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym. Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner. That my game was built on flash, and not fire. Maybe it's my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength; that my pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe you're just making excuses. — Michael Jordan

I slid a hand down the rail to cover hers.
It was a simple gesture, but it was easily the greatest decision I'd ever made.
That one touched destroyed a wall.
I wasn't even sure whose wall it had been to begin with - hers or mine. But I would have spent my entire life tearing it down if I could have only predicted what was on the other side. — Aly Martinez